Japanese Character Culture Mi-Young Oh Professor of Department of Japanese Studies and Linguistics, Soongsil University, Korea 1. Introduction 2. Japanese Characters 1) Introduction, Acceptance, and Transformation of Kanji 2) Emergence and Transformation of Kana 3. Japanese Culture of Characters – Characters, Amusement, Arts 4. Conclusion --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction Japan is an island nation which consists of many islands, such as Hokkaiido, Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu, Okinawa, and so on. Japanese means the language that is used in Japan neighbor country of Korea, and most of people using Japanese are the Japanese people who live in Japan. The area of Japan is about 3.8 times larger than South Korea, and the population is over 120 million, which is about 2.5 times more than South Korea. Because Japanese is widely used, there are various dialects depending on locations. However, the language used in Tokyo, the capital city which is the center of politics, culture, and economics, serves as a common language. These days, Japanese people usually use Kanji and Kana to write Japanese, as well as Latin alphabets and Arabic numerals. Picture 1. is a part of a newspaper, and Picture 2. is a Kana category from a famous Japanese dictionary, Kojien. With these pictures, we can see the actual Japanese writing, using both Kanji and Kana. This article aims to examine Japanese characters and Japanese culture with characters. For Japanese characters, this paper will first examine Kanji and Kana, and explore the introduction, acceptance, and transformation of Kanji, and then, also examine the emergence and the transformation of Hiragana and Katakana. Especially for Kana, I need to address Manyogana and Sogana before examining Kana. For Japanese culture of characters, I examine Tawamuregaki, a play on characters, Mojie, a combination of characters and images, and Edomoji, calligraphy. Picture 1. Japanese writing style in a newspaper Picture 2. Japanese writing style in a Japanese dictionary 2. Japanese Characters 1) Introduction, Acceptance, and Transformation of Kanji Kanji, originally Chinese character, was introduced to Japan between the late 3rd century and the 4th century by people from the Korea peninsula. It was mentioned in Nihonshoki, The Chronicles of Japan (completed on 720), that Dr. Wang and Dr. Ahjikgi from Baekje propagated the Analects of Confucius and the Thousand-Character Classic to Japan, and taught Japanese princes. It is not sure whether all these cases are true, but the one is true that people who came over to Japan from the Korean peninsula introduced characters and cultures to Japan. At the moment when Kanji was first introduced in Japan, Kanji was regarded as foreign characters to write Chinese, so Japanese people might read Kanji with Chinese pronunciation. After that, their desires to understand Chinese would be steadily increased, and there might be some attempts to translate Chinese to read. At the beginning, people tried to understand Chinese by using punctuation marks, or using flags at paragraphs. As this process advanced, people started to change Chinese word orders into Japanese ones, and Chinese words to Japanese ones. So, there occurred one methodology which was similar to the translation. It is called Kunyomi, which means read its meaning. Japanese people used diacritics and some characters to read Chinese with Kunyomi, and those are called Kunten. When using Kunyomi, Chinese words were usually converted to Japanese, but sometimes people read Chinese words with Japanese character sounds of them. In other words, people use Kunyomi to follow the original meaning of the word, but sometimes people just Unyomi. Here, we can find a big difference in attitudes between Korea and Japan when they accepted Chinese characters. In Korea, the only thing that appears when people use language is the sound of Chinese characters, and no one reads a certain Chinese character with Kun, its meaning. For example, when there is a Chinese word ‘天 地’, Korean people read it as cheon-ji depending on the sound of the word, and never read it as ‘sky ground’, with its meaning. That is, people pronounce ‘天地’ as cheon-ji, and unconsciously understand its meaning, ‘sky and ground’. However, in Japan, people read ‘天地’ as tenchi, with Unyomi, or as ametsuchi, with Kunyomi. Furthermore, one Chinese character would have one or two sounds at most in Korea, but in Japanese, one Chinese character would have many sounds. This is because Chinese sounds had been introduced over a long time with many different routes. Sounds that were used at the era of Chinese Oh, Han, and Dang are all used in Japanese. For example, Japanese people read ‘行’ as gyou following the sound of Chinese Oh, kou following the sound of Chinese Han, and an following the sound of Chinese Dang. Like Korea, learning Chinese books was the basis of every study in Japan until the early modern age. It was minority who pursued studies, acquired the language, or read books. However, after a modern education in Japan began, there was an idea constantly that learning Kanji would be the burden for Japanese people, and it was almost impossible for all Japanese people to learn Kanji because of its large quantity, so they needed to limit the number of Kanji. For this reason, there was a movement to limit Kanji using Kanji table. As a result, Jyouyou Kanji Hyou, the table of commonly used Kanji, was established by temporal investigation committee for the national language. This table included 1960 characters, and it was planned to be reflected in newspapers. However, because of the Great Kanto Earthquake, that table was not used, and it was revised on 1931. The second Kanji table was Hyojyun Kanji Taable, designated by temporal investigation committee for the national language. 2,528 characters were included, and there were 1,134 characters from the common Kanji, 1,320 from the semi-common Kanji, and 74 from the special Kanji. However, because World War II happened, this table also was not adapted. According to this stream of times, the government notified Dayou Kanji Hyou, the table of Kanji that were used at that time. This table included 1850 characters, and it was used in the limited fields, such as laws, public documents, newspapers, and magazines. That time was the era of the limitation of Kanji, the time limited the number of Kanji up to 1,850. Furthermore, the limitation was applied to not only the number of characters, but also the fonts and sound-based pronunciations. The Japanese administration notified Douyou Kanji Onkun Table, the table of the sound-based pronunciation of Kanji used at that time, in 1948, and Douyou Kanji Jitai Hyou, the table of the fonts of Kanji used at that time, in 1949. The simplified Kanji designated by Douyou Kanji Jitai Hyou is called Shinjitai, the new-type fonts, which is the basis of the Japanese Kanji fonts. In 1981, the policies to limit the number of Kanji were withdrawn, and Dayou Kanji Hyou was rejected. Instead, Jyouyou Kanji Hyou, the table of commonly used Kanji, was notified by the administration. Originally the Kanji table was used to limit the Kanji, but that use was changed to making the criteria when Japanese people use Kanji in their real lives. Jyouyou Kanji Hyou added 95 characters to Dayou Kanji Hyou, so there were 1945 characters. This table not only represented usage of characters but also showed the category of the sounds and meaning of characters, so it became a comprehensive Kanji table. In 2010, the revised version of the table of commonly used Kanji was notified by the Japanese administration to reflect the information era. 196 characters were added and 5 characters were removed, so the total number of the commonly used Kanji became 2,136, and some Unyomis and Kunyomis were removed. For additional characters, the fonts from Koukijiten, the word dictionary on the qing dynasty, was used instead of the new-type fonts. The reason was because the standard of characters' form used in press, printing, or computer related fields were fully considered. So, there are some characters that have different forms between the original common Kanji and added Kanji even though their components are same. Kanji is originally from China, but there are some characters that are originated in Japan. There are differences between China and Japan. Their environments are different, cultures are different, and life-styles are different. Due to these differences, with thoughtful consideration, there occurred some characters that are not used in China, but are needed in Japan. Those characters are called Kokuji, the national character. For example, there are lots of characters that use 魚 'fish', as their radicals. This is because J apan is the island country, so they can easily encounter or eat fishes. <Kokuji: Kanji that is originated in Japan> Like this, after Kanji was introduced to Japan, it has served as the way to writing Jap anese, and it has been used up to now. This phenomenon is very different from other c ountries that Chinese characters were introduced to. In Vietnam, after the colonial era, they have not used Chinese characters. In case of Korea, Chinese characters form the b ackground of Korean, but Korean has its distinctive way to describe it, so the effect of Chinese characters doesn't come to the surface easily. However, in Japan, the Japanese people cannot use, especially write Japanese properly without using Kanji. In Japanese, there are fewer syllables, so there are lots of homonyms. Homonyms in Japanese usual ly occur due to Kanji, so it would be hard for people to distinguish the meaning of the word just by using only Kana. Furthermore, because there are no spaces between word s in Japanese, it is difficult to understand the meaning of Japanese without Kanji.